By Kyle MacMillan
Bassist Rufus Reid has lit up the New York City jazz scene for nearly 50 years, working in all the major clubs, fronting more than a dozen albums and serving as a duet partner and sideman on scores more with such luminaries as Kenny Barron, Kenny Burrell, Art Farmer, J.J. Johnson, and Akira Tana.
But as important as the Big Apple as has been to this ever-dependable jazz stalwart, none of his success there would have been possible without his early years in Chicago, where he finished his music degree, gained his footing as a player, and established the connections necessary to making the move to the East Coast.
Primarily through Ravinia, Reid has maintained ties to Chicago, performing several times over three decades of summer festival seasons and serving, since 2000, as a faculty member at its Steans Music Institute—first with the summer training program’s jazz component and now also as a key mentor for the Bridges Composition Competition.
But this will be the musician-composer’s final summer co-directing those programs at Steans—a departure he calls “bittersweet.” “I’ve enjoyed each and every year,” he said. “But this year, I turned 80, and to me, it’s time. I’m ready. I think I’ve made a good contribution, and it’s time for someone else to come on.”
But before Reid steps down following the June 18 Jazz Grandstand, the showcase concert of this year’s 15 Steans jazz fellows, audiences will have a chance June 16 to see him in action on the Pavilion stage and bid farewell, at least for now. The bassist will sit in as a guest artist for a Jazz in June “battle of the big bands” with Adonis Rose & the New Orleans Jazz Orchestra and Orrin Evans & the Captain Black Big Band squaring off. Ravina Jazz Advisor Kurt Elling will serve as host and vocalist for the event.
Reid first came to Ravinia for a series of jazz programs in the early 1990s, starting with Duke Ellington tributes in 1991 and ’92. He has a particularly strong memory of a Fourth of July concert in 1995 that opened with the Dave Brubeck Quartet. The second half featured a 95th birthday tribute to jazz pioneer Louis Armstrong, with an all-star ensemble that included trumpeters Doc Cheatham, Harry “Sweets” Edison, and Roy Hargrove, as well as drummer Louie Bellson and, of course, Reid, who was asked to compose a work for the program. “That was a big first for me to write something that involved. That was special,” he said.
Rufus Reid chats with Billy Childs during the workshop rehearsal of the inaugural Ravinia Steans Music Institute Bridges Composition Competition in 2018.
Reid performs his trio Beguiled for trombone, marimba, and bass as part of the concert presenting the first Bridges-winning works.
In 2000, the Steans Institute decided to add a jazz component to its existing programs split between classical piano and strings and voice. Leaders reached out to David Baker, a professor of music and founder of the jazz studies department at Indiana University. A trombonist who later switched to cello, he co-founded the Smithsonian Jazz Masterworks Orchestra and served as its conductor and musical director over 1990–2012.
Baker in turn recruited Nathan Davis, founder of the jazz studies program at the University of Pittsburgh, and Reid, who co-founded and directed the jazz studiesand performance program at William Paterson University in Wayne, NJ, for 20 years. “I’m sure the first year or two was a test to see how well it would go,” Reid said. “It went really well, and it continues to do so each and every year.”
For the first couple of years, the program invited 23 fellows to take part, and that number was pared back to a more manageable 15. “That’s a good number. It gives us three bands of five people,” the bassist said.
The participants, who do not apply but are invited to take part, are typically young musicians at the end of their schooling and the beginning their professional careers. “They already have a voice,” Reid said. “It’s just raw, and we have six more ears to help them realize what they already have.”
Noted Steans jazz alumni include violinist Sara Caswell (2000), a 2018 Grammy Award nominee, and Marquis Hill (2010), the 2014 winner of what is now known as the Herbie Hancock Institute of Jazz International Trumpet Competition.
This year’s jazz program runs from June 9 through 19, with each participant required to write a piece that will be performed during the June 18 showcase.
“You don’t have to do anything but play and write music,” Reid said of the program. “It’s very exciting. And that’s very different for people. There are very few people who can just get up and just do that for eight or nine days.”
And he is right there beside the fellows, mentoring nearly non-stop from 9:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. everyday. In 2018, Reid gained the title of co-Artistic Director of the Steans jazz program. His current colleagues are Steve Wilson, a saxophonist who has toured with Dave Holland and Chick Corea, and pianist Billy Childs, whose latest release, The Winds of Change, won a 2024 Grammy Award for Best Jazz Instrumental Album.
The three also oversee the six-year-old Bridges Composition Competition, for which up-and-coming creators submit cross-genre works written for string quartet and jazz trio. This year, the three directors chose three composers from among 25 applicants for the David Baker Prize—Emiliano Lasansky, Jason Mountario, and Zhengtao Pan. In addition to a $2,500 award, the winners take part in a weeklong workshop that culminates with performances of the three works on June 11.
Although Reid is known today for his virtuosic bass playing, the Sacramento, CA, native got his musical start on the trumpet. After high-school graduation, he even entered the US Air Force as a trumpet player but soon became interested in the double or upright bass. After finishing his military service, he moved to Washington to study the instrument with Seattle Symphony bassist James Harnett at Olympic College. After two years, in 1969, he decamped to Northwestern University in Evanston, IL, where he continued with two members of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra—Warren Benfield and principal bassist Joseph Guastafeste. He was accepted at four schools but picked Northwestern because of its proximity to Chicago, where he thought he could work as a player while attending school.
At the same time he was getting classical training at Northwestern, Reid immersed himself in Chicago’s bustling jazz scene and met out-of-town players who regularly came through the city. At first, he took part in jam sessions, primarily on the South Side where he was living, including some at the now-defunct New Apartment Lounge, where stand-out saxophonist Von Freeman played for many years on Tuesdays with his quartet. “Chicago had an incredible amount of really fabulous players, and I got a chance to play with many of them,” the bassist said. “If you were bass player, and you could read [music] and swing, you worked.”
He went on to play at clubs across the city, including a regular gig at the Pumpkin Room on the South Side and the still-extant Jazz Showcase, where he served as a “house bass player.” He also went on the road with Eddie Harris and is featured on several 1970s recordings with the noted Chicago tenor saxophonist who later moved to Los Angeles.
“In a sense, my jazz school was at the Jazz Showcase, because there was no jazz in schools at that time,” he said. “Chicago was very important to me, because it linked me to the rest of the world.”
Despite all his success in Chicago, Reid nonetheless couldn’t resist the lure of New York City, which, as it was then, is still the jazz capital of the United States. Helping to fuel his desire to move were his opportunities to perform with a top-level visiting quintet that was fronted by vibraphonist Bobby Hutcherson and included saxophonist Harold Lamb. Impressed with the young bassist, the group invited him to take part in a European tour. “It was shortly after I graduated [in 1971], so it was a great graduation gift,” Reid said. “It was actually my first time going to Europe and going to these jazz festivals. It was unbelievable. I didn’t even know those things existed at the time.”
Hutcherson returned to Chicago some time later for a group of weekend performances, and Reid struggled to reprise the intensity he had shown on that tour, and the veteran jazzman noticed. “He said, ‘What’s wrong? Your stuff is not happening,’ ” Reid recalled. “Boy, that hurt real bad.” That lapse plus a local economic downturn made him realize that he needed a change. He went home that night and told his wife that they were moving to New York. It took him a few years to save enough money and make the necessary preparations, and they relocated to Teaneck, NJ, in 1976.
Teaching has been a part of Reid’s career almost from the very beginning. Jamey Aebersold, an internationally known jazz educator heard Reid play with Eddie Harris and invited the bassist to take part in his renowned jazz workshops. His first such educational outing was in North Dakota, where he encountered eager young players with talent but little basic knowledge. So, he ended up creating little exercises for them and telling them to buy a book produced by his “hero,” Ray Brown’s Bass Method. He was later riding in a car with Harris and told him about the experience, especially his helping to sell multiple copies of Brown’s book. Hearing the envy in Reid’s voice, the elder jazzman asked him why he didn’t write his own method book. The bassist took up the challenge and did just that, producing what became known as The Evolving Bassist in 1974. He has regularly updated it since.
Reid (left) introduces the quintet of musicians he mentored during the 2022 Steans Jazz Program at the culminating Jazz Grandstand concert. While the 15 young professional musicians are in residence for their fellowships at Steans each summer, during their workshops and rehearsals they divide into three quintets, each primarily mentored by one of the Artistic Directors.
At a peak in the 1980s and ’90s, Reid sold 3,000–4,000 copies a year, and sales still reach some 500 copies annually. “It’s still out there,” he said. “It’s just really functional information. You can put it into any idiom that you want. A chord is a chord.”
After he moved to New York, he played with famed trumpeter Thad Jones, who was an artist-in-residence at William Paterson University. Jones invited Reid to accompany him to the school for some masterclasses on the jazz rhythm section. Then in 1978, Jones moved to Europe with little notice, and Reid got a panicked call from the university wondering if he could fill in. A year later, he co-founded the school’s jazz studies and performance program, which was designed to be a conduit for students to New York’s professional scene, and served as its first director. “I said, ‘Well, okay, I’ll be there for a couple of years. I ended up being there 20 years,” Reid said.
Although Reid is stepping away from his yearly commitment to the Steans Institute, he is in no way giving up performing or teaching. In 2015, he received a Grammy nomination for Best Instrumental Composition, and he wants to boost his focus on such projects. “I’m writing a lot more,” he said, “and I want more time to devote to that.”
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Kyle MacMillan served as classical music critic for the Denver Post from 2000 through 2011. He currently freelances in Chicago, writing for such publications as the Chicago Sun-Times, Early Music America, Opera News, and Classical Voice of North America.